Where to park your money in Malaysia? Maybank GIA-i

Attention: Maybank GIA-i has been REVISED

A revision on Maybank’s GIA-i will be done on 16 June 2017 and again on 1 August 2017. Read more about it hERE.

I am no longer recommending this as a place to park your excess cash anymore.

Maybank GIA-i

Many have been asking me about investing but today, I’d like to talk about where I park my cash reserves while I’m waiting. I’ve tried savings accounts, fixed deposits, and most cash management funds. Out of all of them, I’m currently really content with Maybank’s “General Investment Account-i”. Also known as Maybank GIA-i. It is a Shariah-compliant investment account based on the contract of Mudarabah (profit sharing).

A reader and member of Lowyat brought Maybank GIA-i to my attention back in 2016. I had been naively using Maybank’s M2U savers prior to this to park my excess cash reserves.

When it comes to investing, my cash reserves will need to be liquid and preferably provide me with good interest. A conventional fixed deposit (“FD”) will not do because the minimum term required is 1 month and if I uplift it within a month, I lose all my interest there. Hence, a savings account. Traditionally, savings accounts in Malaysia give you about 1-2% interests p.a. and 1-month FDs give about 2.8 – 3% p.a.

Guess what Maybank’s GIA-i’s interests are? They’re currently at 3.45% p.a. right now!

The Terms

Upliftment cannot be done on the same day as placement. You’ll have to wait for ONE day. (thanks Alvin)

Tip: It doesn’t matter if you do not have RM5K available. Because even for the 2 month term, you can still uplift the next day and you’ll get your 3.45% p.a. So don’t sweat it!

Updates:

From Liew: If the Maybank GIA-i option does not appear in the dropdown list, it means you have to go to your Maybank branch and open a new Islamic Fixed Deposit account and make an over-the-counter placement for the 1st GIA deposit. After that, GIA should appear as an option when you make a new GIA placement through M2U.

The Pros

Profit is calculated daily.

Flat and transparent rate on your balance.

Higher return compared to saving accounts and your conventional FDs

High liquidity. Even if you uplift it prematurely, you will be entitled to your returns based on the number of days you’ve placed your GIA-i. This is where the GIA-i beats FDs hands down for an investor like me. The higher interest helps as well.

The Risks

You’ve always heard the saying The higher the risk, the bigger the reward. The same applies here, with a higher return than your savings account and average FD, what are the risks you’re subjected to? The only risk you have to bear here is that Maybank GIA-i is not covered under PIDM.

It’s pretty simple and straight forward. Next, I’ll show you the steps on how to make your placement. All of it is done online so you’ll need to register for and log into your Maybank2u account.

Step 1

After logging in, click on Accounts & Banking. Thereafter, to the left of your screen, you’ll see Fixed Deposits & Mudarabah IA. Next, you click on “Make a placement.

Step 2

Next, you’ll see the page above. Select General Investment Account-i (GIA-i) from the drop down menu.

Step 3

You’ll then be brought to the next page. Read the fine print and fill up all the options. It’s pretty standard so don’t worry about it.

Step 4

Maybank will create a new account automatically for you. All you have to do next is Select term. Unless they have promotions or if you have less than RM5,000, the term doesn’t matter. You’ll be credited with the same amount of interest anyway so I always go for the shortest one.

Step 5

Finally, you select which account you want the cash to come from and then how much you want to put in.

The rest are pretty self-explanatory. If you’re in doubt, you can just follow what I’ve selected as per the picture above.

End.

I’ve tried my best to make this as simple as possible for everyone to understand. I’m vouching for Maybank GIA-i because I’m using it myself and it has proven really useful. Please consider this instead of the conventional FDs and don’t be too worried about the lack of protection by PIDM with this.

I know the Freedom Fund looks exciting with its big numbers and all, but the defense and backend side of investing is equally important as well. The higher interest Maybank GIA-i provides me for parking my cash reserves there helps to keep my returns up and provides me with the liquidity I require as well.

You’ll probably need to get a little legwork in and set up a system for yourself. Once that’s done, you can then focus on your portfolio.

I’m sure many of you are currently using Maybank GIA-i already. If you guys and girls have any other places to recommend we park our money, please leave a comment!

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59 thoughts on “Where to park your money in Malaysia? Maybank GIA-i”

The Maybank website just released the revised rate for GIA, which is lower than 3.45%. Correct me I am wrong on this, and also that premature withdrawal without waiver of profit is not applicable anymore after 1 August 2017.

Hi there, I have several questions as I am new to all these. From maybank page it says that GIA-i is not protected by PIDM and principal is not guaranteed.
1)Does that mean I might lose my principal anytime?
2) And If I register a new GIA-i account and say I put RM10k in it, can I go to ATM and press ‘others’ to withdraw it as cash like m2u savers?
3) If i put RM10,000 with 1 month tenure, i withdraw it 30 days later. With 3.45% as interest rate, I will get (10,000 x 30/365 x 0.0345) = Rm28.35.. I will get Rm10028.35 after one month. Is my calculation right?

Hi there, do you have calculate the interested been payed is that around the % it mention?
Bcoz i saw some post mention that the interested paid is variable,and most the time it received with around 2.8% p.a. ?

That’s the wonderful thing, it doesn’t matter if its 2 months or a year because you can withdraw any time and get your interest.
Nope, GIA can be uplifted and placed online. You have to uplift it and it’ll give you the option choose which account to transfer to.

There is a trick to earn the interest. You can withdraw after 6 a.m. in the morning and place the GIA prior to 10 p.m. at night within the same day, you will still be entitled to the 3.45% interest. I have been doing this for the past 6 months.

Divvy nice how to write up on Maybank GIA. I also did made numerous placement since reading it on your blog. Took me a while to get it done, if you had written this post earlier would have saved me a lot of time reading and figuring out how to make my 1st placement.

And your right, it is a good place to “park” it and when needed can immediately liquidate.

Thanks Divvy and KW, that was very helpful. Ya its quite obvious which to go for,there are just too many charges in PM. Btw Divvy, I’m still looking forward to your writeup on mutual funds 🙂 After years of exclusively investing in mutual funds without any real knowledge, I finally opened my cds account and ready to start investing in shares.Trying to avoid those damned fees and be more in control. Thanks for inspiring me and keep up the great work!

Real glad to hear about your new CDS account! Out of curiosity, which broker did you choose to start with?
As for my article on mutual funds, it’ll be an outright bashing because I feel so strongly for the poor investors. I’ll ruffle a lot of feathers but it’s in the works. You’ll be the first to know when it’s out.

Also, do let us know when you make that first share investment! It’s an important milestone and I’d like to know what everyone buys.

Hi Divvy, thanks for the informative article. What about Public Mutual’s “Public e-cash deposit fund”? One P.Mutual agent recommended it to me, saying it’s an excellent solution for parking my excess cash there for short term, saying it has higher returns (can’t remember the interest) than saving account, but I did not understand how it works, even after reading the prospectus.(not so well versed in the terminology) Does it really have high liquidity? and how are the interest calculated? Any hidden terms and conditions? I’m also doubtful about the charges incurred and whether there will be a loss if I put in and take it out in a short period, so I did not commit yet. I would like to ask for your opinion regarding the pros and cons of this fund.Thanks!

Maybank’s GIA-i is one of the best out there in terms of liquidity as well as high interest rates.

The e-cash deposit fund is one of many cash management funds out there and they are not liquid at all. If you’re investing in PM shares then yea they are liquid, for others I think you’ll need to wait a little bit.
Normally, cash management funds like these don’t charge fees. But when it comes to Public Mutual, I won’t be surprised..

I’ve never invested in public mutual so I can’t give you an opinion on the cash fund. You should get your answers from your agent though. But as I’ve always said.. Stay away from Public Mutual. Do let us know about the interest rate as well as liquidity when you know though. It’d be interesting to compare a few products. Right now, none can compare to Maybank’s GIA-i though. As far as I know.

So, it’s pretty obvious which is one is better. I pretty much only invest in Bond funds in Public Mutual as it is the most convenient way for a retail investor to obtain exposure in Bonds, to my knowledge. Stay away from the equity & money market funds.

It’s ridiculous how PM charges 0.4% for the management of cash??? Seriously? The manager’s job is just to find safe places to put the cash in.. How hard is that?
Nothing to say any more about PB Mutual lol.

Off the top of my head, I’d say GIA gives a higher interest (correct me if I’m wrong) and more liquidity.
The only thing that the cash fund offered in FSM serves is to provide you a temporary interest bearing account to park your money.

I’ve been sweeping all my balance in my savings account to GIA for about a year now. If I remember correctly, if the GIA option does not appear in the dropdown list, it means you have to go to your Maybank branch and open a new Islamic Fixed Deposit account and make an over-the-counter placement for the 1st GIA deposit. After that, GIA should appear as an option when you make a new GIA placement through M2u.

Yeap looked at it earlier. The first few conditions I can live with, but spending RM500 a month on an OCBC credit card for 1.2% is a deal breaker.
Maybank’s GIA-i is no frills! Heh but thanks so much for the suggestion bro. Maybe some of our OCBC readers can use it.

For the second T&C about bill payment, one of the officer taught me, pay same bill for three times will get the interest, Whereas the third one, I guess for a citizen in Malaysia, spending RM500 a month is easy (e.g. petrol and grocery, etc).

Thanks for sharing this great advice. I have shared it on my FB page so more people would be informed about it and in return my small way of contributing more traffic to your blog for sharing this advice.

Anyway I have a question, how do you uplift the cash when I have signed up for example RM5k – 1 month tenure? I was playing around with the uplift option but it doesn’t allow me to uplift on the same day I have made the placement, is it some t&c that uplifting can be done only the next transaction day etc?